S. F. Sorrow

S. F. Sorrow is the fourth album by the English rock band Pretty Things. Released in 1968, it is known as one of the first rock operas ever released.

Composition
S. F. Sorrow is a psychedelic rock opera that explores the life of a single character "from rural birth to Prodigal's Oliver Twist freakout". PopMatters says that the album "mixes the story of the protagonist Sebastian and his journey towards learning to trust people and ultimate disillusionment with a psychedelic pop score that fittingly captured the mood of 1960s Swinging London". Phil May said regarding Pretty Things' decision to record a rock opera, "We were looking for another way of making a 40-minute disk. I could never understand why an album had to be five A-sides and five B-sides with no connection. Pieces of music had been written for at least a 40-minute listen, and I thought the best way to do that was to overlay a story line and create music for the various characters and instances. It was the oldest concept in the world, but at the time nobody had done it before."

Release
In the United States, the album was released by Rare Earth Records, a Motown subsidiary which focused on white rock artists, in contrast to the generally African American soul music artists of the main label. Motown acquired the rights to release S. F. Sorrow through a licensing deal with EMI. Rare Earth Records was launched with a five album promotional box set that included S. F. Sorrow alongside releases by Love Sculpture, Rustix, the Messengers and Rare Earth, the band the subsidiary was named after.

Pretty Things were unable to reproduce the rock opera on stage at the time of release. What's more, the release was delayed until December 1968, by which time it was less revolutionary than it would have been had it been released earlier; however, the Pretty Things' album is generally considered to be the first rock opera. Members of the Who have claimed that S. F. Sorrow did not have an influence on Pete Townshend or his writing of Tommy. Pretty Things and several critics disagreed with the Who. In 1969, the band opted to mime recordings from the album for a television performance because they, along with the mixing engineer, had taken LSD before they were to go on the air, in addition to the compositions being difficult to replicate live.

Reception
In Rolling Stone, Lester Bangs termed it "an ultra-pretentious concept album, complete with strained 'story' [...] like some grossly puerile cross between the Bee Gees, Tommy, and the Moody Blues" and suggested that the band "should be shot for what they've done to English rock lyrics." By contrast, Melody Maker enthused that it represented a "much improved group" and praised the playing by each individual member.

Later reviews have been far more positive, with many considering the album a UK psychedelic classic. AllMusic said that the album "straddles the worlds of British blues and British psychedelia better than almost any record you can name". The New York Times wrote, "Loaded with rich harmonies, sharp dissonances, odd electronic effects, early Pink Floyd-style psychedelia, proto heavy metal and songs that drastically change styles from one moment to the next, the album was full of pop experiments and abstractions that have become a calling card for current underground alternative bands."

Mojo wrote in a review of the band's studio albums box set, "The Pretty Things stretched to their furthest extent for S.F. Sorrow. Slathered in backward guitar, sitar and mellotron, May’s gloomy extended piece about a disillusioned Great War soldier has a heft that fey Brit-psych contemporaries could not match. May’s molten-Wilfred Owen lyrics on Private Sorrow, the Greek chorus wails and Taylor’s sheet metal guitars on Old Man Going and Balloon Burning signposted a bad trip tour de force."

Legacy
In 1998, Pretty Things, along with Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour and singer Arthur Brown, performed the album in its entirety at Abbey Road Studios for an Internet simulcast, which was recorded and released as the album Resurrection the following year. The 2009 incarnation of the Pretty Things featuring May, Taylor, Frank Holland, George Perez, Jack Greenwood and Mark St. John would perform the album onstage on April 10, at the 5th annual le Beat Bespoke Weekender sponsored by Mojo magazine. In 2023, all 13 of the band's studio albums were released in the box set The Complete Studio Albums 1965-2020.

AllMusic wrote in its review of the album, "Although it may have helped inspire Tommy, it is, simply, not nearly as good. That said, it was first and has quite a few nifty ideas and production touches. And it does show a pathway between blues and psychedelia that the Rolling Stones, somewhere between Satanic Majesties, "We Love You," "Child of the Moon," and Beggars Banquet, missed entirely." The Guardian called it "one of the few consistently brilliant British psych albums [...] the taut drums and endless two-note guitar riff of Balloon Burning sounds remarkably like motorik krautrock a decade early [...] the SF Sorrow-era Pretty Things seem not disaster-prone but perfectly poised, not behind the times but ahead of them."

Pretty Things

 * Phil May – vocals
 * Dick Taylor – lead guitar, vocals
 * Wally Waller – bass, guitar, vocals, wind instruments, piano
 * Jon Povey – organ, sitar, Mellotron, percussion, vocals
 * Skip Alan – drums (on some tracks, quit during recording)
 * Twink – drums (on some tracks, replaced Alan), vocals

Production

 * Norman Smith – producer
 * Peter Mew – engineer
 * Ken Scott – engineer on "Bracelets of Fingers"
 * Phil May – sleeve design
 * Dick Taylor – photography